Coffee

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This week most markets continued to make gains, with all assets except silver and coffee advancing. Japanese  stocks were especially strong.

Bitcoin rose 33.5% to close at 2.57 g. This more than recovers its drop last week. Expect continued volatility!

More on Market Update 10 May 2013: TLT and HUI Treading Water

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This week the markets shifted back into forward gear, with all assets except Bitcoin and the 20 year Treasury Bond advancing. Coffee and copper were especially strong.

Bitcoin started the week in an uptrend; trading at over 3 g on Monday, it declined through the week to close at 1.93 g, down 31%. Since early April, the BTC has made a series of lower highs and higher lows; over the next few weeks the market should make up its mind about whether Bitcoin is overvalued or undervalued at these levels. Keep in mind that it could drop by 75% and still be in an exponential uptrend. Expect continued volatility!

More on Market Update 3 May 2013: Long Bonds at Critical Support

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This week saw a pullback after the prior week's monster rally.  Government-issued currencies, stocks and bonds all gave up about half of last week's gains, while Bitcoin continued its recovery. Commodities were mixed, with silver continuing to fall, crude oil continuing to rise.  The week's biggest loser was coffee, which gave back much of its gain from last week. 

More on Market Update 26 Apr 2013: Coffee tumbles

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Another "mostly higher" week, led by a massive rally in all currencies. The only asset classes that fell for the week were silver bullion and gold stocks. 

Bitcoin had another volatile week, but in the end recovered strongly from last week's "crash", leading all other asset classes by rising 52.5% to finish at 2,643 mg.  It's not over yet, folks: expect more wild price action as newcomers work through the process of price discovery in a thinly traded market. For comparison, the London market trades about 640 tonnes of gold per day. Last week, Mt. Gox trading between bitcoins and USD had a daily average volume of 0.5 tonnes. In fact, the entire world supply of bitcoins currently has a value of about 30 tonnes, less than 5% of the gold traded each day in London.

More on Market Update 19 Apr 2013: Massive Currency Rally

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All asset classes but Bitcoin, coffee, JPY, and mining stocks were higher this week. 

Bitcoin ended a wild week down 38.7% at 1693 mg, after trading has high as 5,253 mg and as low as 1,099 mg. Friday had the largest volume ever traded for Bitcoin, over 964 kg. As I forecast last week, this kind of price action is to be expected in such a thin market as new buyers enter in quantity. Over the weekend, BTC has recovered to 2,051 mg. Keep in mind that BTC could fall to 500 mg or so and still be in an exponential uptrend! Expect further volatility.

More on Market Update 12 Apr 2013: Bitcoin, Gold Stocks "Crash"

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All but three asset classes were lower this week, the gainers being Bitcoin, gold stocks, and long dated treasuries

Bitcoin ended the week up 51.8% at 1,392 mg, after setting another record high every day this week. The latest round of panic buying seems to have been triggered by the partial bank account confiscation plan announced in Cyprus. The realization that their money is no longer safe in banks has spooked investors across Europe, but especially in Spain, where downloads of Bitcoin software have skyrocketed. Because Bitcoin has such a small market cap, currently about 15,800 kg, and trades less than 200 kg each day, it doesn't take much money moving in (or out) to swing the price, so we should expect continued volatility in the near future.

More on Market Update 22 Mar 2013: Europe scrambles for bitcoins

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Most assets were lower this week, with the major exceptions being Bitcoin, the free market online currency, and Cotton

Bitcoin ended the week up 8% at 917 mg, after recording another all-time high of 938 mg on Monday. Things got exciting the next day, as high transaction volumes caused two different versions of the Bitcoin mining software to update the distributed ledger (known as the "block chain") differently. This split, or "fork in the block chain", was deftly handled by the developer group, but it caused a dip in the price which has now been mostly erased. If you are interested in more technical details, you read about them here. This should serve as a reminder that Bitcoin is a young currency, and still vulnerable to failures of technical, social, or political origin.  Keep position sizes small enough that you won't be badly hurt if one them turns out to be fatal, but keep in mind that there is still tremendous upside if this experiment in free market money succeeds.

More on Market Update 15 Mar 2013: Bitcoin Hiccup

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In a week when most assets turned in excellent performances, bitcoin once again outshone all others. The only things that lost ground this week were mining stocks and silver.

Currencies were all higher, led by bitcoin, which added an astounding 24.6% to close at 520.7 mg, within spitting distance of its all-time high of 598 mg.  In fact, in all of bitcoin's history, there are only 3 days on which it was traded at higher levels.

More on Market Update 15 Feb 2013

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Bitcoin continued to rocket upward this week, with long term treasuries a distant second place. Coffee and the Nikkei Index were the biggest losers.

Government issued currencies were mixed, with the Yen down 2.6% and the Euro down 0.5%, while the Canadian Dollar rose 0.5% and the US Dollar was unchanged. In contrast, the free market currency, Bitcoin, gained 8.2% to close at 418 mg. The BTC is up 62% in the last month.

More on Market Update 8 Feb 2013 – Bitcoin Rise Continues

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This was a good week for everything but gold stocks and coffee.

All the currencies were higher, led by the free market Bitcoin, which continued its near vertical ascent, adding 8.1% to last week's 9.1% rise, closing at 312.2 mg.  The Euro was the strongest of the government issued currencies, up 1.8% while the CAD was weakest, up only 0.2% – now at parity with the USD at 18.7 mg. More on the USD below. The Japanese Yen closed up 1.7% at 0.210 mg, hovering near its all-time low of 0.205 mg, set the weekend before. Look for more weakness here as the Japanese government printing presses begin to run overtime.

More on Market Update 25 Jan 2013 – Everything Up but Gold Stocks